Celebrating holidays the Russian way!

Here we are!
No, it is not Halloween we are dressed up for, it's our group celebrating the holidays the Russian way! Yep, dressing up for New Year's and Christmas is the tradition in my country.

Almost everything went according to my plan. I had to cut the games a bit short since we were running out of time. And also,the thing was that we did not have Ded Moroz! I couldn't persuade my DH to be one (but he was very busy today, anyway, and wouldn't be able to come), that's why I had to come up with an emergency solution.

Well... Snegurochka came alone, and when I asked her what had happened to DM, she said that his sleigh had gotten stuck in the deepest snow ever all the way in far away Siberia. Since our dear DM was snowed in and could not come, he had sent his granddaughter Snegurochka with the gifts for the children. Clever, hah?!

Kids were doing such a wonderful job trying to pronounce those Russian words I had prepared for the skit. And S had a message from DM with the words written in Russian. I was going around the circle asking kids to tell me what those letters meant. And when I got to Ivana, of course, she read the message, translated it for the kids, and started to encourage them to repeat the words so that the tree finally lights up.
And the tree was a masterpiece on it's own! Look at it!!! We had a craft activity with the kids first and then the trimming part was everybody's favorite! First we put the colorful paper chains and lanterns on the tree, and then the cookies, candy and dried fruits I had brought from home.

We had Russian music playing, the music of my childhood. We were dancing around the tree, everybody received a gift, and new memories to remember. And also, as a nice bonus, everybody got to take home a bag full of homebaked cookies (fourteen varieties!). Yum!

I am so glad I was able to do this celebration for the kids. We had such a blast!I hope to have established a new tradition in our group.

And coming home in a starting snow blizzard did not matter much... It was a day well spent!